


Nope: Marinette - the Incredibly Reluctant Protagonist

by blackjax123



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: And has exactly no time for your magical nonsense, Badass Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, F/F, Mari Can and Will Stab a Bitch, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Needs a Hug, Multi, Oblivious Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Our Girl is Gonna Get All the Love!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26722816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackjax123/pseuds/blackjax123
Summary: When Marinette is born with blue hair, her parents know she is going to be a protagonist; that is, unless they have any say in the matter.Whatever chance she may have had of being a sweet young girl is gone, replaced with the bitter cynic (with fantastic acting skills) who is forced everyday to avoid the beginnings of various stories, from being kidnaped by nobles, forced into a cult, childhood promises and many, many fantasy origin stories.She wants exactly none of your magical nonsense, and you can't make her your magical girl.Right?
Relationships: Alya Césaire/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Chloé Bourgeois/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Kagami Tsurugi, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Sabine Cheng/Tom Dupain
Comments: 184
Kudos: 342





	1. Our Heroine is Born

**Author's Note:**

> Our Protagonist is born, and her parents realize the hell they are in for.
> 
> Please note: All actions taken by Narrative Causality may or may not have any bearing on how the universe actually functions.

**Chapter 1: Our Heroine is Born**

It had been a long, hard labour but finally, Sabine Cheng held her daughter in her arms.

Her lovely Marinette.

The small, exhausted woman smiled down at her girl, her _daughter_ , before looking up into the eyes of her Tom, her great, lumbering, soft, bear of a husband. It didn’t need to be said. She knew they would both do anything to see her girl be happy and healthy.

She turned her tired eyes back to her little girl, who cooed up at her.

She was beautiful. With bright blue eyes, and a full head of black hair......wait.

“Tom?” Sabine called to her husband carefully.

“Yes, darling?”

“What colour hair does our little girl have?”

“Hmm? She’s right there love, are you feeling ok?” He laughed.

“Humour me for a second, you great lump. What colour hair does she have?” Sabine asked, more firmly, exhaustion forgotten for now.

Tom raised a questioning eyebrow at her before answering.

“Well, if you insist,” he starts with a chuckle, “Our little Marinette has a large amount of black hair.” Sabine’s relief lasted only an instant before it was interrupted.

“Hang on, now you mention it. Looking closer it’s still black, but when the light hits it right it’s blue. Isn’t that strange, honey? Honey?”

Toms voice fades into the background, as the mother’s fear was made real.

Marinette, her lovely, baby girl, had blue hair.

_Natural_ blue hair. That it was only when the light hit it right did nothing to erase this.

Sabine had, to her shame, watched a lot of anime over the years, usually reading the manga to match, and her studies lead her to one, horrifying conclusion:

Marinette was going to be a Protagonist.

The mother’s horror quickly turned into determination, and she looked up at her concerned husband with steel in her eyes.

“Tom, we have a lot of work to do.”

................................

It only took a few heated discussions to get her husband on board with her plan, but thankfully Tom had taken a number of literature papers at university and understood the power of narrative causality, that terrifying, implacable force that drives a story or, in this case, causes one. In his initial panic the baker had offered to leave them, but Sabine had quickly talked him down, reminding him that doing so would only contribute towards a Tragic Backstory, which was to be avoided at all costs.

The plan, at it’s core, was simple:  
Make Marinette be a normal girl, with a normal life, and do everything necessary to ensure this.

The life of a protagonist was inevitably messy, and frequently cruel, and the inexperienced parents would do anything to spare their darling girl from such a fate.

Soon after arriving home from hospital the pair put the first step of their plan into action. If they wanted to prevent the fate of a Protagonist, then they would have to know the warning signs, which meant research was needed. With a sigh, Sabine dug out her large library of anime and manga from the storage closet. They had been expensive to buy as a teenager so she had been loath to part with them and now her hoarding was paying off.

Hauling her stash into the living room, Tom met her with a loving hug, a hot chocolate and cuddles with her new baby girl.

Sabine sighed into his arms, and smiled at the gurgling baby.

It was all worth it, just for them.

................................

Very quickly their long hours of research was paid off

Sabine looked down at the letter in her hands, re-reading it for the umpteenth time, with a sad smile on her face.

“Darling, what’s wrong, what does it say?” Asked Tom, coming up beside her.

The mother turned to her husband, smiling while wiping away a tear

“It’s a letter from my Aunty’s lawyer. She died and has left me some estate, but I have to be there in two days or I forfeit my right to it. It even came with plane tickets! I could just go for one day and we would be set for life!” She exclaimed.

Tom nodded cautiously before sighing and gently guiding her by the shoulders to face the window.

Sabine looked up at her husband, puzzled by his response before turning to face where she had been pointed.

Oh.

There on a soft blanket was her baby girl, her Marinette, smiling as she kicked her legs, her hair gleaming blue in the sunlight.

And with a sigh, the mother tore up the letter and threw it in the bin, keeping hold of the tickets.

................................

Two days later the mother held her daughter while crying, her husband hugging her firmly as they watched the news. The screen showed the still-burning plane, who’s flight number and the worst of the fire matched those of the seat tickets clutched in her hand.

Sabine’s sobbing only grew worse as she realised this was far from over.

Narrative Causality was ruthless, and a tragic backstory was too tempting for it to give up easily.

................................

Over the coming weeks, the parents inherited multiple estates from distant relatives, won prizes in contests they never entered and won awards they should never have been eligible for.

All of these shared a few traits in common: The ‘prize’ was time sensitive, only one of them would be able to collect it and they would always have to go on a short trip alone.

It was always only a short separation, for a grand reward.

Each time, they turned it down.

Each time, they watched as the plane they would have taken, the bus, the train, was met by an accident.

Sometimes broad and sweeping, an engine failure or explosion killing tens of passengers. Sometimes very specific and all the more terrifying for it, a plane of glass shattering and piercing a single seat sharing a number with yet another ticket that had arrived to engineer such a fate.

It was small relief that their research provided them with a light at the end of the tunnel. They had both broke down sobbing when they discovered that while they may never be completely free of inflicting their daughter with a tragic backstory, 99% of them held a child’s parent dying in childbirth or in the first year.

They just had to outlast it.

................................

The universe grew too impatient for schemes.

Sabine had been about to go in the van to deliver an order, when Marinette started screaming in the house, and refused to settle for the next hour, causing the mother to request the order be picked up instead. Shortly afterwards, the small Chinese woman received a call telling her that the pick up had been delayed. She listened in dumb shock as the caller explained that all of the taxis and delivery vehicles in a radius of blocks had been involved in freak accidents. All within minutes of when the order was due.

To the parent’s relief no-one was harmed in these accidents, though the passenger doors on each (thankfully empty) taxi were caved in.

The bakers made orders pick up only the next day. No catering commission was worth their lives.

Life moved on.

................................

They closed in on the 10 month mark and the universe was at it again.

They had been so careful.

They had kept strictly to their regular customers, taking on no new catering jobs, taking none of the opportunities that just so happened to fall into their laps.

Kept their day to day lives as regular as possible for new parents.

They had thought they were doing well.

Sabine had been waiting in the car with Marinette, enjoying some light classic rock while Tom did the grocery shopping. Nothing new, nothing fancy, nothing risking a new allergy.

The mother smiled as she saw him step out of the shop and begin to cross the car-park, then gasped as two cars back into him. At the same time.

Had it been anyone but her Tom (Like me, for example, her brain supplied) they might have died.

Thankfully Tom was built not unlike a grizzly bear, and proved it as he shoved the cars away from him, car bodies denting with the force.

He walked back to the car, dismissing the flustered drivers responsible for the collision, and got back into the car silently.

They ordered their groceries delivered the next week.

................................

It was Marinette’s birthday but Sabine knew better than to relax.

Her bright eyed, blue-haired babe had been born at 4 pm exactly (which on hindsight was a warning itself).

Looking at her watch, it was 3pm now.

The mother had her husband close the shop early.

At 3:30, Sabine had Tom take Marinette upstairs and barricade the room, crying as she ordered him to leave.

At 3:50, the mother sat with a cup of herbal tea in a vain attempt to calm her nerves.

At 3:53, she heard Marinette start crying and waited a minute to see if Tom had this.

At 3:54, she knew he did not.

At 3:55, the mother stood to aid her husband in calming their baby and had started up the stairs when a car ran through the wall, demolishing the table and chair she had been using.

Sabine stared blankly at the car half inside the house, listening dimly to the faint plink noise of cooling metal and steam before looking once more at her watch, feeling ice running through her veins as what just happened set it.

She dimly recalled that over that last week or so, her watch had been slightly off, slowing down somehow. One glance at a wall mounted clock told her it was off by 5 minutes.

The real time was 4:00pm exactly.

And there it was, Narrative Causality’s parting shot.

She had felt safe, that whatever was going to happen would occur at the last possible moment.

And it had.

And she hadn’t known it.

As Sabine listened to her husband discuss insurance with the driver, she found herself curled around her little girl, softly singing _Joyeux anniversaire,_ and crying gently as Tom took her in his arms.

She knew that their work was far from over, but they had escaped the tragic backstory for now, and that was enough.


	2. Growing Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A summary of some of the things tiny Mari does before becoming older Mari

After the first year and the persistent threat of random accidental death was more-or-less passed, life seemed to pick up speed for the new parents and baby Marinette.

As the early years passed, business boomed as they were able to take on more catering jobs, and their baby girl was a consistent source of joy and light in their eyes.

Sabine soon found that this meant they had to take a more active role in teaching her how to live with her..... condition.

Marinette, for her part, was busy enjoying all that life had to offer. This turned out to be a surprising amount for the little girl.

“Maman! Can I help with the baking?” the bright eyed toddler asked.

Sabine smiled down at her darling girl.

“Of course wǒ de xiǎo chóngzi, you are always welcome to help your father and I!” The mother laughed softly.

As the girl skipped away, she heard her mother muttering, “Likes crafts. Maybe slice of life or harem?”

Not too long after this, Sabine sat the little girl down with some cloth, needle and thread, and taught her how to sew. When asked why she did this the mother smiled and said,

“Just in case. Never hurts to give the best case scenario a helping hand.”

Marinette had no idea what her maman meant by this, but spending time with maman was always fun, and soon enough, she found sewing fun too.

This seemed to make her maman very happy too, which made it extra nice.

When she told her maman this, she got to have some fresh cookies made and iced especially for her, so she must be doing good, right?

................................

“Maman, why are we dressed like this?” Marinette asked, tugging at the hem of the loose fit white clothing her mother had had her put on.

Sabine smiled at her daughter before answering.

“Well wǒ de xiǎo chóngzi, you are a beautiful little girl, and I want to keep you happy. The world is not always nice to such lovely xiǎo chóngzi so I want to teach you to keep yourself safe.” She explained, still smiling, but serious.

Marinette nodded, looking as serious as a 4 year-old ray of sunshine could, causing her mother to chuckle and ruffle her hair.

“Now. Come xiǎo jiāhuo. This is called Tai Chi. Later I will teach you something called Wushu. Let us begin.”  
  
The little girl smiled as she followed the actions her mother taught her, enjoying the flowing movements and spending time with her beloved Maman.

When they were finished their first practice, Marinette hugged her mother with a bright smile on her face.

“That was lots of fun Maman! When can we do some more?”

Sabine could only smiled at her daughters enthusiasm.

“Well, wǒ de xiǎo chóngzi, we will be practising every day!” She replied, which got a whoop of joy from the little girl.

................................

At six years old, Marinette could barely contain her excitement as her mother led her inside the large warehouse looking building, grinning as she caught sight of the obstacle courses, mats, foam pits, and climbing walls inside. She all but bounced up and down as Sabine shook hands with the instructor, before he turned to her and introduced himself.

“Hello, my name is Coach Mark! I teach climbing and parkour here. You must be little Marinette! What brings you here today?”

The tall well muscled man asked, bending down to shake her hand with a smile.

“Nice to meet you Mark! My name is Marinette,” the little girl introduced herself oddly formally, though still smiling. “I’m here ‘cause Maman found me climbing things and said that if I’m going to climb things then I should climb all the things and be good at it,” she finished with a proud smile, beaming up at her equally proud mother.

The coach laughed at her response before answering, “Well, your Maman is a smart woman! If you’re going to do something you should do it well. And in this case, that also means doing it safely! Come, let’s get you started!” The lively man said leading her over to a beginner’s wall to start there first lesson.

As she left, Marinette heard her mother mutter, “Sport’s animes aren’t so bad. Though we should avoid tournament archs.”

................................

Marinette was 9 years-old now, and had been enjoying school all in all, though she found her maman’s teachings to be more useful a lot of the time.

Just yesterday of the more oddly specific ones had come into play.

A cute boy around her age had wanted to exchange a life long promise with her at the park, and just like Maman had taught her, she said no and walked away.

“ _Remember Marinette, to never promise someone anything not immediately achievable. Promising someone a croissant is fine, you can get one from home. Promising to Marry someone in twenty years or go to University with someone is not. You have no idea what life holds, and you will both be disappointed”_

Just like maman had said, the boy had wanted to get married in twenty years, so she had been a good girl and said no. Her Maman had been so proud when she told her at home!

................................

When she was ten, Marinette had asked her Maman what having blue hair meant. A boy in her class had commented on it and she was curious. So, reluctantly, her Maman and Papa had told her.  
Told her that it meant that unless she was very careful, she would be the protagonist in some big events. That they would twist her life around them, and play with her fate if she did not fight to prevent it.

It certainly explained things.

All the strangely specific life lessons.

Why she did so many extra curriculars, and knew seven languages while most children her age knew at most two.

And, more recently, why she always seemed to attract the attention of people claiming to be magical, or needing her help, or trying to tell her about obscure parts of her heritage.

Lately she had developed a habit of kicking or stabbing any fuzzy animal not on a leash, ever since they started talking to her, or trying to give her suspicious gifts. She had been told this was fine as long as it tried to do one of those things first.

It also explained her strange desire to stand on lamp posts, which was only enabled by all the climbing and parkour lessons over the years.

She knew she would have to work harder to have a normal life, but she was very grateful for her Maman and Papa.

She would make them proud, and be perfectly normal.

( wǒ de xiǎo chóngzi = my little bug)

( xiǎo jiāhuo = little one)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one's a tiny chapter.  
> But take heart!  
> Next chapter is the beginning of canon and is a LOT longer. Haven't pre-written much further than that though, so expect posting to be far more irregular after that one.  
> Still, holy shit guys, this fic took off sooooo much harder than I thought it would!  
> Thanks so much for the love, and I hope to catch y'all next time <3


	3. Origin Stories Are Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Origin story ep1, part 1, GO!

**Chapter 3: Origin stories are evil**

Marinette woke with the dawn, as she always did. Over the last few years she had become a much heavier sleeper, but even if she was thirteen now, the years of waking early to aid her parents in the morning baking or to practice her martial arts did not fade so easily.

Stretching and yawning, the blunette quickly changed into exercise clothing and went into the spare room where all of the training equipment was kept. Marinette moved through her stretches and a light warm up with the ease of years of practice before working on her forms and combinations for half an hour. This was followed by 5km (or ~3 miles) run on the treadmill, with a sharp incline for the first and last kilometer. Finally, this was all followed by 50 push-ups, 50 sit-ups and 50 pull-ups.

This was all a standard Monday for her and, while she was certainly sweating and awake by the end of her morning exercise, she had long since reached the point where she could do this in her sleep.

Before showering, she took a quick glance at what the normal levels of endurance and strength for someone of her sex, age, body weight, socio-economic status and not actively involved in a sport might have on the chart that had been taped to the gym room wall for the last few years.

She had memorized these a month after they were put up, but she felt the need to check again today.

After all, she was starting at College Francois Dupont today, and the last thing she needed was to stand out. Best not to tempt Narrative Causality too much, she thought with a shudder as she showered and dressed for the day.

The very last thing she needed was to stand out in Gym class, and attract the attention of a teacher or sports coach to play for their team so they can finally make it into the finals, as it was the last year their senpais would be there and winning the national championship that they never/always won or just lost the last year to a rival school, would be the perfect send-off.

No. Marinette had this all planned out. She would be perfectly average. She would score one goal of the type of sports ball game it was (whatever it was) and make two perfectly normal fumbles or outs. Maybe even throw in a near miss goal for varieties sake.

Any exercises the class did she would carefully struggle or keep pace with an average athlete, and in dodgeball, she would get two or three people out in a given game before going out herself.

She could do this, she thought as she finished her (light-natural) make up for the day.

She had trained for this her entire life.

She would absolutely be absolutely average.

The blue-eyed girl looked down at her outfit for the day. Ever since her mother got her into sewing and fashion design, she had carefully made all of her own clothing, today’s being a soft, red, cashmere cardigan over a short sleeved white blouse and knee length black skirt (with pockets, and worn over shorts). It was plain, practical, comfortable, immaculately made and fashionable in an understated manner.

It was, in a word, perfect for her purpose.

She had toyed with plenty of designs over the years, experimenting with fabrics and designs from every age and culture, yet to be average, be _normal,_ sacrifices had to be made, and wearing plain looking cloths was just one of many.

She sometimes sighed at her filing cabinet, locked and perfectly sorted with many years of designs, knowing that to avoid being a Protagonist, she could never touch at least half of them.

Each design was made with her sweat and effort, all bearing her understated signature stitched hidden into the design. Even though she knew this was a vulnerability, knew it was a way that the Narrative might finally catch her, on this she would not budge.

She might never be able to wear the clothes she had designed, but by all she holds dear, they were _hers_ and she would happily kill before someone else laid claim to them.

The thought shocked her for a second.

No. Those were the thoughts of someone begging to be in a mystery shonen. She knew better than that. Was better than that.

Just to be on the safe side though, she triple checked the locking mechanism for the cabinet, and used her laptop to check the isolated drives she used to store her backups of design manuscripts.   
  


Then, because she was checking security anyway, she put her hand on a part of the wall that was identical to the rest of it, except that this part slid open a small hole in the wall. Inside of it was a small vault of her own design that required constant pressure from her fingerprint while being picked as no key for it existed and the tumbler sequence was randomised hourly.

The inside walls of the vault were lined with an array of protective and concealing runes and signs, meticulously researched and carved with painstaking precision.

As much as she hated it, only magic could truly hide magic.

And the contents of the vault? A wide array of strange and ordinary, mystical and glowing and light absorbing objects, be they weapons, jewellery, stones or sticks that had been brought to her, left on her desk, or just plain showed up hovering there one day.

(She never took the ones that where offered to her).

Inside this vault these objects were kept, safe, secure, and most importantly, _out of circulation,_ and there they would stay if Marinette had any say in the matter.

Breathing easier now that she knew the security and back-ups were all in place, Marinette made her way down stairs for breakfast, checking the clock as she walked past it. It was 7:15 now, which gave her half an hour to eat breakfast, 20 minutes to walk to school (which was 5 minutes away) and 20 minutes of whatever nonsense the universe decided to throw at her today so she could arrive at school exactly 5 minutes early.

Perfect.

One well balanced breakfast later (designed to aid muscle growth disguised by just enough fat to hide it, or so her Papa had told her), saw Marinette leaving the house with a box of macaroons in her arm. She had protested when she was given them, but relented when her Maman explained that since her parents were bakers it would be _more_ noticeable if she didn’t arrive with something for the class on the first day of school.

Marinette leaves her house exactly according to the schedule she assigned herself and start what she had named her ‘Daily Obstacle Course.’ Today it consisted of a flock of glowing blue birds that offered to take her to a place where her dreams would become reality (she said no and kept walking), an attractive silver-haired teenager who who attempted to drag her into an alley (she shoulder threw him and zip-tied his wrists to a gutter pipe), and a fully armoured knight who addressed her as your highness, which causes her to start sprinting.

She has almost reached the school when saw an old Chinese man in a Hawaiian shirt struggling to cross the road with rapidly approaching traffic. Marinette, now a veteran at not falling for the Universe’s games, knew that helping the Mysterious Old Person (or M.O.P.) (no. 76 for the year) would put her on-route to being in one. So, she did what she had to do. She ran, tackled him off the road, combat rolled while cradling his head and neck to protect them, and immediately sprinted the rest of the way to her school, stopping only to pause and walk calmly into the school building. With any luck, the old man didn’t see enough to hunt her down and offer a grand adventure and/or mystical powers/objects. This tactic had worked well for the first fifteen of this years batch, and hopefully pulling it out again now wouldn’t come back to bite her.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind she froze.

If she was relying on luck, it was already too late.

In an attempt to prevent the inevitable, Marinette changed her cardigan for a plain black hoody she kept in her bag for just such occasions, and changed her hair from it’s utilitarian bun for a more childish pair of pig-tails.

The hair. It ways came back to her **Gods-forsaken hair!**

The style didn’t matter if the old man had seen the colour, she thought as she made her way into her classroom for the year. It refused to be dyed, refused to be straitened OR curled.

Cutting it simply had it regrow to its shoulder-length overnight, and no amount of leaving it had it grow to any significant length longer. If she had ever had any reservations about her parents theories about the universe and it’s relationship with her hair, they had been put to rest the first time that had happened, she thought grimly with a small, pleasant smile on her face.

Those acting lessons had really paid off over the years, the bluenette noted as she took her seat in the direct centre of the classroom. Too close to the window saw a direct increase in love confessions and proposals, the back got her caught up in underground fighting rings and cults (the blood stains had taken forever to get out of her jeans, and the blouse was a write off), and the front caught the teacher’s attention. Marinette shuddered briefly as she remembered the last time that had happened.

Her thrice her age, _married_ homeroom teacher had begged her to elope with him.

No. Just, no. Never again. She was only safe in the middle, and there she would stay, if she had any say in the matter.

“Oh Mari-Trash! Move your fat ass! Those are our seats!”

Apparently, she did not.

“Really Chloe, we’re doing this again?” The world-weary bluenette muttered before addressing her aggressor.

“Good morning, Chloe, how are you today?” She asked with a professionally pleasant smile.

“I’ll be a lot better once you move. Your. Ass.” snarked the blond in question.

Chloe had once been her friend for a few years in École maternelle and élémentaire. This had changed abruptly when her mother had moved to New York and the blond began adopting some of her mothers traits to try and earn her favour. Marinette had since established something of a rivalry with the girl. Although allowing a rivalry to be established was against her end goal of being normal, she had, reluctantly and after consulting her parents, concluded that it was going to happen eventually anyway and Chloe was a better candidate than most. 

After all, she was predictable, and almost universally despised. And if wasn’t as if she could suddenly become a love interest, right?

“And why should I do that, Chloe?” Marinette asked lightly, polite and calm throughout. 

“I already told you! Those are our seats!” The blonde all but spat, fuming that the girl not only dared to defy her, but questioned her! Didn’t she know who she was?!

“When did that happen, Chloe? I was not aware of such a change.” Answered the blue-haired girl pleasantly and perfectly aware of who, in fact, Chloe was.

“When I needed those seats to be beside Adrian when he arrives!” Chloe yelled, now almost glowing with anger. Who did this girl think she was! A baker’s daughter, trash! With perfect skin and perfect hair, and blue-bell eyes! She annoyed Chloe like noone else ever had, ever could!

After weighing up the pros and cons, Marrinette released an almost silent long-suffering sigh before moving to the seat across from her and one row to the front. This was going to backfire on her, she just knew it, but this avoided further conflict which in turn helped keep the focus off her, so she could afford to compromise right?   
  
“Excuse me, is that seat taken?” asked a cute, unfamiliar, red-haired girl. Wait, unfamiliar. 

A new girl. Naturally. 

“No, no. Feel free,” Marinette said pleasantly, her acting lessons to the rescue once more. 

“I’m Marinette,” said the blunette, holding out a hand. Might as well get to know her, right?

“Nice to meet you Marinette, I’m Ayla. I’m new here,” said apparently-Ayla. 

  
Of course you are, thought Marinette spitefully. 

“So, who’s the blond bitch?” asked the red-head. Outwardly, Marinette raised her eyebrows at the language. Inwardly, she cackled with glee. Screw it, she’d take a new girl if it got her a friend to bitch with.  
  
“That would be Chloe Bourgeois. If you didn’t already know, she’s the mayor’s daughter.”  
  
(“I’m the major’s daughter!” screeched the blond in the background.)  
  
“You don’t say?” Said Ayla wryly. “And what does that mean for the rest of us peasants?” she asked, getting a snort even Marinette’s best efforts couldn’t prevent. 

“Why that means we get to live under her benevolent rule, of course! After all, what greater honour could there be than to support the livelihood of the great Chloe Bourgeois?” Marinette commented with a perfectly strait face and serious tone, causing Ayla to start cackling. 

Just as the blunette started getting ready for another confrontation with the clueless blond, having started counting mentally to keep track of how long it took her to take offense, the teacher came in.

As per usual when meeting someone who had even the slightest chance of having authority in her life, Marinette immediately ran a threat assessment of the woman, watching her as she set down some folders and started looking through one of them.

_Young,_ she thought. _Female, so decreased chance of romantic advances_. _Pretty enough though,_ the budding bisexual noted idly. _Newly graduated, or close enough. Maybe a year or two max under her belt. Increased odds of being idealistic. Likely to take liberties with teaching methods, notably conflict resolution. Evidence of mild muscle tone in legs and core, minor in arms. Likely light_ _exercise_ _at the gym or in a running based sport. Physically unthreatening.  
Conclusion, _she thought as she saw the woman turn a bright smile on the class, _eye candy at best, unlikely to be a good teacher due to inexperience. Actively threatening to well being of students at worst._ Marinette wondered briefly how difficult it would be to get a class transfer if this....  
  
“Bonjour, class! I am Madame Bustier, and I will be your homeroom teacher this year!”  
  
.... Madame Bustier, apparently, didn’t work out. Hopefully not too difficult.   
  
The class began smoothly enough, but halfway through the sound of yelling disturbed the class room. Marinette quickly turned to see a larger boy, Ivan, her mind registered, standing up and getting ready to punch Kim, the class jock. Now Marinette couldn’t necessarily blame Ivan for this having known Kim since they were all but in diapers and being fully aware of just how much of a douchebag the boy could be. But as loud as the altercation was, the more important thing to Marinette was how the teacher handled it.

“Ivan Bruel, that behaviour is unacceptable! Go to the principal’s office!”  
  
Not very well apparently, she notes as the large teen storms off. And, oh look, she goes right back to teaching, no effort put into finding out what Kim did to cause Ivan, a normally nice enough guy, to loose it enough to want to punch out the jock’s lights out? No questions asked about why? No context, just go to your room?

Yeah, no.

She would be ignoring this teacher as much as possible from now on. There was something of a silver lining to this of course. With an incompetent teacher and multiple students who stood out, not least of which being the newly arrived Adrian Agreste (who was a model, apparently), the blunette could probably stand out as much as she pleased with little in the way of consequences. The thought made her truly smile briefly.

(Anyone listening to the class would hear multiple gasps as several of the students caught the sight of the smile on the face of almost otherworldly beautiful blue haired girl, leading to a multitude of red faces, with boys uncomfortably crossing their legs and girl’s becoming aware that a visit to the toilet to change underwear may be in order).

That was no reason to get sloppy of course, she would still do her best not to attract attention, but it did mean that any mistakes she made might be missed in the chaos. Some change in her environment caught Marinette’s attention, causing her to look up and find the teacher had stopped speaking. Looking at the teacher, she noticed Mme. Bustier, had a red face. The flush of colour really brought out the green in her eyes, she thought dimly, before turning her attention back to the design she was sketching, completely missing how the teacher stammered as she tried to restart her lesson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have our bitter protagonist, all grown up and ready to stab things.  
> You'll find out she's gone through a LOT at this point, and, while still a good person at heart, she's kinda fucked up.  
> Here you can also see Mari at her oblivious best, and the Harem genre starting to assert itself.  
> Yes, the main focus will be F/F pairings, as by this point she has been through shit storm after shit storm due to potential male love interests so the intitial attraction bar is one hellova lot higher for them. Might get a couple in by the end, who knows.  
> Anyways, hope you enjoy!  
> Many thanks for the massive response, this story blew up way past my expectations, thanks so much folk <3  
> All the best and take care out there <3


	4. Chapter 4: Protocols Are There For A Reason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mari meets her first akuma

**Chapter 4: Protocols Are There For A Reason**

The lesson continued as any lesson with an incompetent teacher would, with nothing whatsoever of note. Seriously, Marienette was having some fairly major concerns for the academic abilities of the average French teen at this point. She had learnt this stuff from her home-schooled lessons when she was 6 years old. 13 year olds have no business being having difficulty learning this stuff, let alone getting it wrong. The bluenette let out another sigh (the twenty-somethingth this lesson. She had stopped counting at twenty). Sometimes trying to be average was almost physically painful. She imagined it would become actually painful when Gym class came about.

The class had migrated to the library for an introductory lesson (Argh) when Marinette was given the perfect excuse to leave school for the day, something she would normally jump at the chance to do.

Unfortunately, this came in the form of a giant rock monster, screaming “KIMM!” in Ivan’s voice, and she had the sinking feeling that the universe was out to get her into a story again, and that this one might stick. Briefly attempting to dissuade Ayla from running towards the giant, rock, apparently indestructible, probably possessed or at the very least transfigured Ivan, Marinette shortly found herself leaving the school grounds, shaking her head at her new friend’s lack of basic survival instincts.

The blunette walked home at a leisurely pace, content that for once the magical bullshit was happening to someone else for a change, and could only hope it continued to do so. Whatever caused the change in the large teen was likely to wear off, either after time had passed or the caster’s will had been fulfilled, and while she did feel bad for him in a distant sort of way, it wasn’t her problem. That thought alone made her giggle as she opened the back door to her house. For once, it wasn’t her problem!

They weren’t even after her!

Hah!

Marinette arrived in her room, tossed her bag into it’s usual spot and threw herself onto her bed with a happy grin. Let everyone deal with the magical nonsense for once! She would just relax. Grab a few pastries from the shop, maybe watch a movie. Actually, watching everyone else deal with a giant rock Ivan was basically a movie right?

Getting up from her bed, Marinette sat on her desk chair and spun a few times, just because, and stopped facing her desk, where her good mood abruptly dropped off a cliff.

Nah ah.

No way.

No. Fucking. Way.

Some asshole. Some absolute waste of skin and oxygen, may they perish in a most painful manner, left a jewelry box on her desk.

Worse still, it had a Chinese based design, not unlike their magic work, inscribed in blood red on the box’s black surface.

Luckily, Marinette had a protocol for this.

The blue haired protagonist opened her magical vault and took out the inventory file, where she carefully recorded everything known about the object: when she found it, it’s physical description,

and what she suspected it may be related to. For this last one, she wrote out what she knew of her classmates transformation, knowing that there was exactly zero chance that the appearance of this box was unrelated to the incident.

Then, with great care and seething hatred, she deposited the box into her vault and closed it without opening it.

(This was part of the protocol of course. If it’s in a box, _DO NOT OPEN THE BOX._ She had learnt that the hard way. _)_

There, that’s her part in this whole business out of the way.

Maybe if she finds M.O.P No. 76 (he was the obvious culprit) she’ll return it.

But until that happens, whatever is in there, stays in there and out of circulation, Marinette thought with great satisfaction. One more magical artefact not actively screwing with the world. _Good riddance,_ she thought as she retrieved a tart to munch on from the kitchen, before returning once more to her room and turning on the news.

There was definitely a great deal of satisfaction in watching other people deal with the things she had to deal with everyday. Watching the police fire on Rock Ivan, Marinette recalled a plan she had made to help improve the city’s safety from the arcane. She had drawn up lesson plans on how to deal with any number of things, from curses and magical infestations to potentially world ending time paradoxes, of which she had partaken in 5 of them at the time of writing. Of course, as a yet-to-be-jaded-by-the-world 8 year old, she had presented the plans to her parents for their approval, which was for the best really.

They, while proud of her efforts and the attention to detail in the plans, were quick to remind her that it would land her as the ace of some magical task force, and had been therefore nipped the plan at the bud.

Maybe she could leak the plans anonymously to them anyway?

The magical side of things had never been quite so in the open before, and she knew they would only botch the job with a lack of basic knowledge on the subject.

Something to think about, she mused idly as she watched the livestream.

Finding herself with a dry throat, Marinette went to get herself a nice cup of tea, enjoying taking the time to get it just right, humming a gentle tune as it steeped, before returning to watch the livestream and almost dropping her cup at what she saw.

If she didn’t have enough reasons to hate someone breaking into her room and delivering her an inevitably mystical doodad, she would have been forced to team-up with a GODSDAMNED FURRY? And a cat-boy at that?  
  
Trembling in rage at this point, the blunette placed her cup down on the desk and spun around to deliver a devastating punch on to a boxing pad hung on the wall for exactly this reason.

Throwing a combo into the pad for good measure, Marinette sat down at her desk chair, breathing hard. It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s not her problem. She can just watch and relax. And judge, she thought, scoffing at the boy’s ineptitude. While he had a certain athleticism to him, it was clear he had had no training, yet another aspect of the role she would have been forced to play she loathed. Seriously, these monsters clearly attack with lethal intent, and magical suit or no, you’d think it would be pretty common sense to give your ‘chosen one’ some basic training, wouldn’t you?

But no, throw them in the deep end.

And if they die? There’s always more infantile teenagers to throw at the problem isn’t there? She thought bitterly, laughing darkly at how the boy wasted his ‘destruction’ ability on a lamp post.

Dumbass probably never knew how often these things are limited use. She had sat through a few of the info dumps from magical creatures in the past for curiosities sake. Turns out they were nearly identical, and if you’d heard one, you’ve heard them all, with minor variation at least.

The lack of training on the boy hit her again as she saw Rock-Ivan put a fist through an apartment building. Monsieur Cat-boy (which was his name now, regardless of what he called himself) hadn’t even thought to bait the enemy into an open area to reduce collateral damage. That was absolutely going to come back to bite him.

Another half-hour of watching the shit-show in question had Marinette feeling.... resigned. The fight had ended with Monsieur Cat-boy thoroughly beaten but ‘winning’ if you can all it that. He had, though a combination of acrobatics and frankly dumb luck managed to get caught in the same hand that held the possessed object, which he had managed to break before dropping, bleeding and no little amount broken to the concrete below. Breaking the object had stopped the Rock-Ivan’s immediate rampage, yet Marinette had watched as a black and purple butterfly had escaped the broken object (a screwed up piece of paper?), and all of her experience taught her that that would come back to bite them.

The net result of the fight? A badly-beaten cat-boy, an amnesiac Ivan (which was a blessing probably), and a few hundred thousand euros in property damage. Through far more good luck than good management, their had been no actual casualties. A few broken bones sure, but no one had been found actually dead as of yet, hells, none even missing.

Marinette found herself sighing once again. If that was the end of the problem, she’d eat her (very cute) hat.

Sure enough, when Marinette got up the next day and finished her work out, the news was reporting that the butterfly had multiplied and turned a bunch of people into smaller versions of the newly dubbed ‘Stone Heart’. The blunette thought idly that she kinda preferred Rock-Ivan, but she supposed a certain amount of name suppression was probably in order.

Not that that would help the poor guy.

Reaching school served only to confirm what she already knew: teenagers are horrible people. The first thing she saw stepping through the door? Ivan surrounded by a bunch of her close and clearly harassing him.

She could see the boy trying (failing) to keep a handle on his anger, which didn’t surprise her really. What also didn’t surprise her, but she was willing to be the other missed, was that Ivan looked a little... bigger than yesterday. Slightly paler too, but not in the never goes outside sense, more the someone-added-greys-to-his-skin-tones sense. Which was ominous to say the least. Looks like the apparent reversal of the transformation was only that, apparent, and almost certainly had some long term effects.

All of that aside, Marinette couldn’t help but chuckle again at the lack of survival instincts in the teens here (seriously, was there something in the water or what? Might have to buy a better filter or something). She was a little curious as to the thought process going on. Big dude gets turned into a giant, indestructible rock monster because he’s angry, so you decide to piss him off more?

Marinette’s trained senses tell her something’s changed and sure enough, everyone’s gone silent and are all staring at her.

“Shit, did I say that out loud?” She asks Ayla, who nods. Marinette frowns for a second then shrugs.

“Well, screw it, I’m not wrong am I?” She says to the crowd, before wandering into the classroom, leaving the now thoughtful, ashamed, and slightly scared group of teens behind her.

Her verbalised thoughts seem to have made an impact on the her class, as the day proceeds peacefully, more or less. Getting bored halfway through science had her working on a set of transmutation runes that would be triggered by emotion. She was stuck on how to enable a control element, let alone a self replicating spell when she was called up to answer some questions on the board. A brief glance told her that it was an incomplete formulaic balancing, but for a series of redox reactions that would cause a large exothermic reaction, so she finished it and returned to her seat to continue her self study of self-replicating, emotion-triggered transmutation rune inscriptions.

  
(The fact that she had taken a basic chemical balancing question and proceeded to fill the board with the means to turn it into an explosion powerful enough to level several city blocks, leaving her teacher and class confused and/or terrified, was completely lost on her. Marinette studied many things, but apparently the course syllabus wasn’t one of them.)

Finally that class was over, but the next one was the problem: Gym class. She had been dreading this, so to find out they were playing dodge ball was honestly something of a relief.

At first anyway.

But actually experiencing it? Turns out she had been completely correct about it being physically painful to keep pace with kids her age. The balls seemed to move at a glacial pace across the court. She had caught the first five or so on pure reflex. Well, that was the idea right? Only apparently having a 100% catch rate was decidedly not normal, as she found out when the people on the sidelines started cheering for her. Shit.

She had wound up letting herself make it to the last four, then ‘fumbled a catch, resulting in someone on the opponent team ‘taking advantage’ of her ‘vulnerability.’ The way they whooped and hollered when they finally got her had her grinding her teeth. They even had the gall to act smug about it!

She could feel the rage crawling through her like a spreading wildfire, but quickly reminded herself that while there was someone out there using emotion controlled transmutation magic it was probably a good idea to have a handle on them, even privately.

After the class she ran into Ivan about to leave the changing room, looking rather sad about something, the bullying she presumed. She was ready and willing to leave him in that state when,  
“Hey Marinette, can I ask you something?” he called out to her.

Damn it.

“Hey Ivan, what’s up?”

“I noticed you hadn’t been making fun of me, even after I turned into Stone-heart. I just wanted to ask why?”  
  
The blunette mentally rolled her eyes into her head, and knew she would struggle to retrieve them.

“Ok so, 1) I think Stone-heart is a dumb name, way prefer Rock-Ivan. At least that way it’s yours you know? And 2) Did you want to be turned into a Giant raging rock monster?”

Ivan stared at her blankly for a second before saying, “No...?”

“Well there you go then, not your fault. Not gonna blame you for that,” she said, then tried to walk away before-  
  
“Hey wait, can I get your help with something then?” The large boy called out to her.

-he asked her for something else. Double damn it.

Marinette turned around with a carefully calm face while all but grinding her teeth.

“Yes, Ivan?” she said sweetly, causing a shiver of fear to run up his spine.

“I-I was just wondering if you could give me some advice to help me get together with Mylene.”

This made her pause for a second. Relationships, getting in them or being in them, were not something she had ever trained for. More the opposite really, spending far too much time running from people wanting to be in one with her.  
Hmm, maybe if she just kinda reversed her experience with getting away from them? That might help do the trick. Worth experimenting with anyway, willfully ignoring the fact she was using another teenager’s love life as her guinea pig for this.

“Well, you could try singing to her? I hear you do that. And maybe do it in private? That way it’s more romantic, and if she says no, it doesn’t embarrass either of you,” she said with authority she didn’t have.

Ivan nodded, a hopeful smile on his face, which turned into fear as Mari stepped in close with a look of fury on her face.

“And if I find out she said no, and you went after her anyway, I WILL make you suffer, got it?” she all but hissed in a voice that spelt destruction for those who disobeyed.

Ivan swallowed, before nodding quickly.

“Good,” she said before walking away. She really couldn’t stand the ones that chased her.

Well, that was her good deed for the day, she thought happily as she walked to class, ignoring the boy who had all but pissed himself in fear of the girl half his size.

She was quite looking forward to how her experiment turned out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm officially out of pre-written stuff. Will be posting this one as I finish chapters. Really enjoying writting it, but between writer's block and needing the right mind-set to write this story in particular, I can't make any promises on when the next chapter will come.  
> Either way, hope you like! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my particular brand of nonsense!  
> This work is inspired by this tumblr post I saw a few years ago: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/694124-tumblr  
> And it occurred to me noone really addressed the fact she has naturally blue hair.  
> So here we are.  
> We gonna give Mari all the love, but only as compensation for all the bullshit she'll be going through >:D  
> Please note, this is very much a side project for me. I'll be posting irregularly, but it's honestly way too much fun to abandon, so don't worry about that :) Thanks for your patience!  
> Kudos and Comments are forever welcome, give me the will to live!  
> All the best! <3


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